Lot 79: FARISSOL, Abraham (1452-c.1528). Iggeret Orhot Olam, in Hebrew [Letter on the Ways of the World]. Venice: Giovanni di Gara, 1586.

8o (139 x 89mm). Collation: 1-4 8 5 4. Diagrammatic map of the New World on 5/1v, type-ornament frame on title and text incipit. (Lightly waterstained, headline in 2 lvs. just shaved.) Modern polished calf (light abrasion on lower cover). Provenance : Gabriel Groddeck, 1677, Ven[ice], German philologist (1672-1709, title inscription). FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PIECE OF HEBREW AMERICANA. Born in Avignon, Abraham Farissol spent his adult life primarily in Ferrara (where he was cantor and was active as a scribe), immersed in Renaissance life revolving around the enlightened court of the d'Este. He was also attendant at the court of Lorenzo de'Medici, where his interest in traveller's tales and discovery was whetted. Indeed, he states in the Iggeret that it was at Lorenzo's court where he first heard of the possibility of life in the southern hemisphere. The Iggeret is divided into 30 chapters which give an overview of geography, discuss the boundaries of Israel, consider the discovery of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, describe an earthly Garden of Eden, and, in chapter 29, relate the discoveries of Columbus in the New World: 'The land is rich in natural resources. They have an abundance of fish [and] forests..., teeming with large and small beasts of prey.... The sand along the shores of the rivers contain pure gold..., precious stones..., and mother of pearl.' His description is accompanied by a diagrammatic map of the New World, similar to that illustrating Vespucci's Mundus novus (1504). Other chapters give detailed directions for travel by sea from Venice to Constantinople, and then to Alexandria, Egypt, and also from Italy northwards to Flanders by either land or sea, presumably intended to aid businessmen and traders. The work, first published posthumously, was translated into Latin in 1691 by Bodleian librarian Thomas Hyde and reprinted in Hebrew in numerous editions. (Cf. D. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: the Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol, Cincinnati: 1981, and A. Kapr, Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress, Washington: 1991.) VERY RARE; five copies are located in Anglo-American libraries (British Library, Brown University, Hispanic Society of NY, Yale, Library of Congress) and only one copy has been sold at auction in the past century (the Rabbi Nachum Dov Friedmann copy, sold Hodgson's 7 March 1927, lot 371, subsequently Sotheby's NY, 21 May 1993, and Kraus catalogue 193). Not in EDIT; Alden, European Americana 586/26.